Isou (Goldstein), Isidore

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ISOU (Goldstein), ISIDORE

ISOU (Goldstein), ISIDORE (1925– ), poet. Isou immigrated to France from Romania. He wrote verse and created Lettrisme, an ephemeral literary theory which advocated the dislocation of the word and a return to the original letter; in this some critics have seen an unconscious echo of the Kabbalah. In his essay, L'agrégation d'un Nom et d'un Messie (1947), Isou pessimistically foretold a second Auschwitz that would engulf surviving Jewry.